DailySusan Humor Blog

WHAT GETS YOU

Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you as though some strange thing happened unto you. . . .
-- 1 Peter 4:12

I saw him at the office Christmas party. He was bald, holding himself up with one hand on a cane, the other clinging to the bar. His hands were so skinny, they looked twice as long as normal. His face was puffed up like the Pillsbury Dough Boy.

It was Bob. He has cancer. I didn’t know.

Over the years, I’ve loved get-togethers with my husband’s co-workers, and Bob has always been a favorite. He’s what they call a ‘’go-er,’’ the life of the party.

And now here he was, on chemo, with a big purple blotch on the back of his big hand to prove it.

But I looked deep into his eyes -- and there I saw it. That twinkle. That strut.

‘’I’m going to beat this,’’ he told me. ‘’I’ve got it beat in my chest and now I’m going to beat it in my leg. I thought it was bad, when I first found out. But it’s not. I have faith. This is not going to be what gets me.’’

We both grinned, and embraced. He’s right. It won’t. With that faith, nothing can.

That’s the way it is with trials and tribulations. You live through them, and look back, and wonder why you worried quite so much. Things are rarely as bad as they seem.

For instance, there’s an internet story going around about a lady found sitting in her car outside a grocery store, holding her hands to her head in terror. It seems she heard a gun go off, and thought she’d been shot in the head.

She was holding in her brains ‘til help arrived.

But it wasn’t her brains. It was dough. A biscuit container had popped open in the heat of the car, and splattered the back of her head.

She thought it was bad. Very bad. But it wasn’t. It was dough.

I can relate. Once, I was convinced our daughter had scarletina, a form of scarlet fever. They had sent a letter home from school that it was going around. The next day, she had a whole bunch of little red dots on her skin. I called the pediatrician asking for medication and instructions for quarantine.

They made me bring her in. The nurse took one look. The dots were on her neck, wrists and ankles.

The nurse told me gently, ‘’Those are chigger bites.’’

The light broke. We HAD been raking pine needles the other evening. It HAD been buggy.

Ohhhhhh. Nevvvvvver mind.

Another time, a friend and I got broadsided by a drunken driver. She was driving. The collision threw her into my lap. At first, she wasn’t breathing. They rushed her into the ambulance and started cutting off her clothes. Bones were swelling up out of her flesh. Everything on the left side of her body seemed to be broken.

In contrast, I seemed to be unhurt. But how could that be?

I felt myself, to see if I had any bones poking out. My hands ended on the top of my head . . . where I felt a creepy, viscous goop.

Oh, my God!

My head’s cracked open like a melon, and I didn’t even know it!

Brains!

Blood!

Ewwww!

But I looked closer, under the streetlight. Hunhhh?

I tasted it.

Chocolate! It was my Wendy’s Frostee! I’d been holding it when the guy hit us.

I thought I was hurt baaaaad. But it was only Frostee.

Only Frostee, only chigger bites, only dough. And in Bob’s case, only cancer.

If you have faith and can hang in there through trials, even the Big C, you find that nothing is ever as bad as it seems. And nothing is ever going to be able to ‘’get’’ you after all.

Because if you have faith in the One who promises to see us through everything, always, no matter what, for all time, you’ve already been ‘’gotten’’ . . . chigger bites, chocolate hairdos, dough-for-brains, and all.

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Praise report: Father God, You give gifts to each of us for the benefit of all of us. We are pleased that Chad Sievers, the son-in-law of our close friends, has been named an Academic All-American for the 2004 football season. He’s the first Cornhusker to earn that honor in years. What an accomplishment! Best of all, Chad is a strong Christian who always gives all the glory and credit to You. What a role model for young people . . . and us fogies, too, for that matter. Thank You, Jesus, for this distinction for a deserving young man. (Matthew 7:20)